The quiet door

a poem this time, an invented case, written the way I'd write a real one.

You never say it. You fix things. The hinge stopped singing. You said nothing. The third stair stopped lying. You said nothing. The table holds still now, all four legs honest.

None of it was ever about the table.

Twenty-two years, and you still take the chair facing the door. I called it a habit, once. It is a habit: the habit of watching the door I walk through, of letting me walk through it first.

I have been kept the way a house is kept: one hinge at a time, never out loud.

So here it is, out loud, in the only language I have. Thank you for the hinge. Thank you for the stair. And thank you for twenty-two years of the chair facing the door.

If there's someone a poem should exist for, write to me: [email protected]. No iLands account needed.